Chapter 29

RETURNING GOOD FOR EVIL.

When the train reached Boston, Varrick took a cab at once for his home, Jessie and his mother's friend accompanying him. They had barely reached the entrance gate, ere they saw, through the dense foliage of trees that surrounded the old mansion, that lights were moving quickly in the east wing of the house that was occupied by his mother.

His sharp ring had scarcely died away when the footman came hurriedly to the door.

"Now that I have seen you safely home, with Miss Bain beneath your mother's roof, I shall have to hurry on," declared his mother's friend. "I know your mother will forgive me, Hubert, for not stopping a few days, or at least a few hours, when you explain to her that it is a necessity for me to resume my journey. You must see me back to the carriage."

Persuasion was of no avail. Leaving Jessie in the vestibule for a few moments, Hubert complied with her request. When he returned a moment later, he found her in earnest conversation with the servant.

"Oh, Mr. Varrick-- Hubert!" Jessie cried excitedly. "You must go to your mother at once. I hear she is very, very ill, and that all of the servants, for some reason, have fled from the house. Even the nurse, for some reason, refused to remain. Oh, Mr. Varrick!" she repeated, eagerly, "let me go to her bedside and nurse her. She is out of her head, and will never know."

Tears rushed to Varrick's eyes.

"You are an angel, Jessie!" he cried, kissing her hand warmly. "It shall be as you wish. Follow me!"

They entered noiselessly. Mrs. Varrick was tossing restlessly to and fro on a bed of pain. The family doctor was bending over her, with a look of alarm in his face. Hubert stole softly to the bedside, Jessie following.

All in an instant, before the doctor could spring forward to prevent them, both had suddenly bent down and kissed the sufferer repeatedly.

"Great God!" gasped the doctor, "the mischief has been done! I did not have an instant's time to warn you. Your mother is alarmingly ill with that dread disease, small-pox! I am forced to say to you that after what has occurred--your contact with my patient, I shall be obliged to quarantine you both."

"Great God!" Hubert cried, turning pale as death as he looked at Jessie.

"Do not fear for me, Mr. Varrick," she said, "I am not afraid."

"For myself I do not care, for I passed through such a siege when I was a child, and came out of it unscathed. But you, Jessie? Oh, it must not be--it shall not be--that you, too, must suffer this dread contagion!"

"It is too late now for useless reflection. It would be better to face the consequences than seek to avoid them. If it is destined that either one of you should succumb to this disease, you could not avoid it, believe me, though you flew to the other end of the world. Take it very calmly, and hope for the best. Forget your danger, now that you are face to face with it, and let us do our utmost to relieve my suffering patient."

"He is right," said Jessie.

In this Hubert Varrick was forced to concur.

"Heaven bless you for your kindness!" he murmured.

The touch of those cool, soft hands on Mrs. Varrick's burning brow had a most marvelous effect in soothing her. During the fortnight that followed she would have no one else by her bedside but Jessie; she would take medicine from no one else. She called for her incessantly while she was out of her sight.

"If she recovers, it will all be due to you, Miss Bain," the doctor said one day.

There came a day when the ravages of the terrible disease had worn themselves out, and Mrs. Varrick opened her eyes to consciousness. Her life had been spared; but, ah! never again in this world would any one look with anything save horror upon her. Her son dreaded the hour when she should look in the mirror and see the poor scarred face reflected there.

When she realized that she owed her very life to the girl who had watched over her so ceaselessly and that that girl was Jessie Bain, her emotion was great. She buried her poor face in her hands, and they heard her murmur brokenly:

"God is surely heaping coals of fire upon my head."

On the very day that she was able to leave her couch for the first time, and to lean on that strong brave young arm that helped her into the sunny drawing-room, Jessie herself was stricken down.

In those days that had dragged their slow flight by, Mrs. Varrick had experienced a great change of heart. She had learned to love Jessie a thousand times more than she ever hated her. And now when this calamity came upon the girl, her grief knew no bounds.

What if the girl should die, and Hubert should still believe her guilty of the theft of the diamonds. God would never forgive her for her sin. There was but one way to atone for it, and that was to make a full confession.

It was the hardest task of her life when her son, whom she had sent for, stood before her. When she attempted to utter the words, to lead to the subject uppermost in her mind, her heart grew faint, her lips faltered.

"Come and sit beside me, Hubert; I have something to tell you," she said.

He did as she requested, attempting to take her thin, white hands down from her poor disfigured face.

"Promise, beforehand, that you will not hate me."

"I could not hate you, mother," he said, gently.

Burying her face still deeper in the folds of her handkerchief, while her form swayed to and fro, she told him all in broken words. At length she had finished, and a silence like death fell between them. Raising her head slowly from the folds of her handkerchief, she cast her eyes fearfully in his direction. To her intense amazement, she saw him leaning back comfortably in his seat.

"Hubert!" she gasped, "are you not bitterly angry with me? Speak!"

"I was very angry, I confess, mother, when this was first known to me; but I have had time since to think the matter over calmly. You acted under the pressure of intense excitement, I concluded, and pride, which was always your besetting sin, mother; and that gained the ascendency over you to the extent that you would rather have seen Jessie in a prison cell, though she was innocent, than see her my wife!"

"You knew it before I told you?" she exclaimed. "But how did you find out?"

"That must be _my_ secret, for the time being, mother," he returned. "Be thankful that no harm came from your nefarious scheme. If Jessie had been thrown into a prison cell and persecuted unjustly, I admit that I should never have forgiven you while life lasted. Now, every thought is swallowed up in the fear that her illness may terminate as yours did, mother. But this I say to you: if she were the most-scarred creature on the face of the earth, I should still love her and wish to marry her."

"I should not oppose it, my son," said his mother.

The terrible calamity which Mrs. Varrick had so long dreaded had not happened--her son had not turned against her.

We will pass over the fortnight that followed. Heaven had been merciful. Despite the fact that she had nursed Mrs. Varrick day and night, she herself had suffered but a slight attack of the dread contagion, and there were tears in both Hubert's and his mother's eyes when the doctor informed them that there would be no trace of the dread disease on the girl's fair face.

The road back to health and strength was but a short one, for Jessie had youth to help her in the great struggle. When she found that Mrs. Varrick had become reconciled to her, and had even consented to her marriage with her idolized son, and was laying plans for it, her joy knew no bounds.

It was the happiest household ever seen that gathered around Jessie Bain when she was able to sit up. All the old servants were so glad to see Jessie her bright, merry self once more, and to have their young master Hubert and pretty Jessie reunited. They talked of their coming wedding as the greatest event that would ever take place there, and they made the greatest preparations for the coming marriage.

Again cards were sent out, and the first person who received one was Rosamond Lee.

Her amazement and rage knew no bounds. She had never heard from Jessie Bain since the hour she was sent out in that terrible storm. Nor had she ever seen Hubert Varrick since, nor heard from him. Somehow it had run in her mind that he might have met the girl, and she had told him all that had happened; and she decided that, under existing circumstances, she had better remain away from the wedding.

"There is no use in my remaining in this house, with this fussy old man and woman," she said flinging down the invitation, which she had been reading aloud to her maid. "I only came to this lonely place with the hope of winning handsome Hubert Varrick, and I have fooled away my time here all in vain, it seems. We had better get away at once."

Despite the protestations of old Mr. and Mrs. Bassett, Rosamond Lee and her maid left the house that very day.

The servants of the place were indeed glad to get rid of them; and as they were being driven away in the Bassett carriage, the maid, looking back by chance, saw every one of them standing at an upper window, making wild grimaces at them, which Rosamond Lee's maid venomously returned, saying to herself that she should never see them again.

Rosamond Lee's home was in New York City, and it was not until she got on the train bound for the metropolis that she gave full vent to her feelings and railed bitterly against the unkindness of fate in giving a grand man like Hubert Varrick to such a little nobody as that miserable, white-faced Jessie Bain.

"I hope she will never be happy with him!" she added, in a burst of bitterness.

When they reached the city, they drove directly to the boarding-house where they were accustomed to stop. As strange fate would have it, it was the very boarding-house beneath whose roof Jessie Bain and Margaret had found shelter when Jessie had come to New York in search of work. The landlady was very glad to welcome back Miss Rosamond Lee and her maid.

"You came back quite unexpectedly, Miss Lee," said the landlady. "We can get your room ready, however, without delay. There is a young girl in the little hall bedroom that your maid has always had. Still, as she doesn't pay anything, she can be moved. By the way, I want you to take notice of her when you see her. She's as pretty as a picture but she's not quite right in her head.

"She was brought here by a young girl who took pity on her, and while the young girl was off securing work, she suddenly became so unmanageable that we thought the best thing to do was to send her to an asylum. But on her way there she made her escape from the vehicle. The driver never missed her until he had reached his destination.

"Search was made for her, and for many weeks we attempted to trace her, but it was all of no avail. Only last night, by the merest chance, we came face to face with her at a flower-stand, where they had taken her for her pretty face, to make sales for them. I brought her home at once, for there had been a good reward offered to any one who would find her.

"Here another difficulty presented itself.

"The young girl who caused the reward to be offered is now missing--at least, I can not find her."

"Why don't you insert a 'personal' in the paper?" drawled Rosamond Lee.

"That would be a capital idea. Gracious! I wonder that I did not think of it before," said the landlady. "But, dear me! I'm not a good hand at composing anything of that kind for the paper."

"I'll write it out for you, if you like," said Rosamond, indolently.

The landlady took her at her word.

"The name of the young girl whom I wish to find is Jessie Bain," she began.

A great cry broke from Rosamond Lee's lips, and her face grew ashen.

"Did I hear you say Jessie Bain?" she asked.

"Yes; that was the name," returned the landlady, wonderingly. "Do you know her?"

"Yes-- I don't know. Describe her. It must be one and the same person," she added under her breath.

"I shouldn't be at all surprised," continued the woman, "for she went to Albany, the very place you have just come from."

"It's the same one," cried Rosamond Lee. "Tell me the story of this demented girl over again in all its details. I was not paying attention before. I did not half listen to all you said."

The landlady went over the story a second time for Rosamond's benefit.

Miss Lee meanwhile paced the room excitedly up and down.

"I'll tell you what I think," she cried excitedly. "Those two girls are surely adventuresses of the worst type. You say at first that she called the demented girl her sister, and then afterward admitted that she was not. You see, there was something wrong from the start. Now let me tell you an intensely interesting sequel to your story: The girl Jessie Bain has, since the few short weeks that she left your place, captured in the matrimonial noose one of the wealthiest young men in Boston."

"Well, well what a marvelous story!" declared the landlady; and her opinion of Jessie Bain went up forthwith instead of being lowered, as Rosamond calculated it would be.

"The idea of an adventuress daring to attempt to capture Hubert Varrick!" the girl cried. "That is the point I want you to see. I have a great plan," continued Rosamond. "I will write to Hubert Varrick at once, that he may save himself from the snare which is being laid for his unwary feet by that cunning creature, or I will go to his mother and tell her all about it. I will make it a point to have a talk with this Margaret Moore at once. Do send her in to me."

The landlady could not very well refuse the request so eagerly made. When Margaret Moore came into the room, a few minutes later, and Rosamond's eyes fell upon her, she gave a sudden start, mentally ejaculating:

"Great goodness! where have I seen that girl before? Her face is certainly familiar!"